[msqueri]

I've never understood the "since they can't play a 5th year unless accepted into a Stanford Graduate program" argument. 

Yup, I agree. My thoughts are as follows:
1) Given the decreasing likelihood of five year graduation ...

 

I assume that by "never understood" msqueri really means this is simply incorrect. 

In addition, is the decreasing likelihood of fifth year players really true?

The roster currently lists 8 fifth year players and 1 sixth year. One of those is Fields who "transferred" to Stanford. Still that leaves 8 fifth+ year players on the roster which doesn't seem all that few versus the past. 

Since he wasn't a Stanford undergrad, Fields had to get into a graduate program. He is listed on the roster page as (MS). Nobody else is listed with an indication of a graduate degree, which leads me to think that none are purely grad students. So, the presence of 8 fifth plus year continuing Stanford players makes it pretty clear it is not logistically that difficult to hang around for a fifth year.

I did a really over the top extensive but I thought interesting analysis a while back comparing fifth years across Stanford history with fifth years under Shaw and came up with a really clear finding: Shaw has had fifth year players in roughly the number his predecessors had, just not fifth year linemen. It's the fact that Thomas Booker, Drew Dalman, Walker Little, Foster Sarell, Devery Hamilton, Michael Williams, Jovan Swann, Casey Tucker, Aziz Shittu (terrible burnt redshirt.....despite what I, BC, and Lex have said in this thread, there's no getting around how damaging it is to have a guy have a season with one tackle that precludes the possibility of future redshirt, become first team all-conference, and then go undrafted), and Harrison Phillips didn't play fifth years. That's hard to weather. For context, 54 percent of the offensive linemen recruited between 2004-2010 stayed five years while only 21 percent of the OL recruited between 2011-2017 stayed five years, and 71 percent of the defensive linemen recruited between 2004-2010 stayed five years while only 28 percent of the DL recruited between 2011-2017 stayed five years. If I were to update the numbers they'd go even further down as we didn't have a single linemen play five years from the 2018 class (Booker, Fox, Umerah, Stratford).

Next up is to see what happens with the 2019 class. How many among Bragg, Pakola (already gone), Rouse, Miller, Hornibrook, and Nugent will be on the roster for the 2023 season? Will we get more than half the starting OL to return or will we follow this trend of the Shaw era where one returns and the rest are gone?

[msqueri]

I've never understood the "since they can't play a 5th year unless accepted into a Stanford Graduate program" argument. 

Yup, I agree. My thoughts are as follows:
1) Given the decreasing likelihood of five year graduation ...

 

I assume that by "never understood" msqueri really means this is simply incorrect. 

In addition, is the decreasing likelihood of fifth year players really true?

The roster currently lists 8 fifth year players and 1 sixth year. One of those is Fields who "transferred" to Stanford. Still that leaves 8 fifth+ year players on the roster which doesn't seem all that few versus the past. 

Since he wasn't a Stanford undergrad, Fields had to get into a graduate program. He is listed on the roster page as (MS). Nobody else is listed with an indication of a graduate degree, which leads me to think that none are purely grad students. So, the presence of 8 fifth plus year continuing Stanford players makes it pretty clear it is not logistically that difficult to hang around for a fifth year.

I did a really over the top extensive but I thought interesting analysis a while back comparing fifth years across Stanford history with fifth years under Shaw and came up with a really clear finding: Shaw has had fifth year players in roughly the number his predecessors had, just not fifth year linemen. It's the fact that Thomas Booker, Drew Dalman, Walker Little, Foster Sarell, Devery Hamilton, Michael Williams, Jovan Swann, Casey Tucker, Aziz Shittu (terrible burnt redshirt.....despite what I, BC, and Lex have said in this thread, there's no getting around how damaging it is to have a guy have a season with one tackle that precludes the possibility of future redshirt, become first team all-conference, and then go undrafted), and Harrison Phillips didn't play fifth years. That's hard to weather. For context, 54 percent of the offensive linemen recruited between 2004-2010 stayed five years while only 21 percent of the OL recruited between 2011-2017 stayed five years, and 71 percent of the defensive linemen recruited between 2004-2010 stayed five years while only 28 percent of the DL recruited between 2011-2017 stayed five years. If I were to update the numbers they'd go even further down as we didn't have a single linemen play five years from the 2018 class (Booker, Fox, Umerah, Stratford).

Next up is to see what happens with the 2019 class. How many among Bragg, Pakola (already gone), Rouse, Miller, Hornibrook, and Nugent will be on the roster for the 2023 season? Will we get more than half the starting OL to return or will we follow this trend of the Shaw era where one returns and the rest are gone?